


Smudge

by casey_sms (shinygreenwords), shinygreenwords



Category: The Social Network
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Daddy Issues, Face Slapping, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Physical Abuse, psychological abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-26
Updated: 2011-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 16:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinygreenwords/pseuds/casey_sms, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinygreenwords/pseuds/shinygreenwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It’s the barest smudge on tan skin but Mark notices. Eduardo is never dirty.</i></p><p>Inspired by <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/tsn_kinkmeme/390.html?thread=1283718#t1283718">this prompt</a> at the <span><a href="http://tsn-kinkmeme.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://tsn-kinkmeme.livejournal.com/"><b>tsn_kinkmeme</b></a></span>. Modified to: Eduardo comes back from a weekend at home bruised (by his dad.) Mark notices and takes care of it.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Smudge

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning/kinks:** Angst, implied physical abuse (face slapping), implied psychological/emotional abuse, child abuse, daddy issues, hurt/comfort.  
> 
> 
> I love the first fill and hope that it will be continued. This one contains a less serious physical injury but Eduardo still needs emotional and psychological support. I actually wanted [](http://slasher48.livejournal.com/profile)[**slasher48**](http://slasher48.livejournal.com/) to write this for me but then I wrote it for myself. She wrote something really awesome for me anyway. She enables me a lot. ILU, BB  <3

Eduardo is leaning over Mark’s shoulder, checking his algorithm for him as requested. He’s muttering under his breath and Mark can feel it, warm on the side of his face.

It’s the barest smudge on tan skin but Mark notices. Eduardo is never dirty. It’s wrong. Maybe if he’d just woken up, having fallen asleep on a textbook. But Eduardo is in a three piece suit, not a hair out of place. Mark can smell his cologne. Eduardo must have been getting ready this morning, looking at the mirror and he must have seen the smudge on his face. He stares.

Eduardo is fixing up something, long fingers tapping on the keyboard and then he’s sitting back on Mark’s bed.

Mark forgets to thank him because he’s still staring. He thinks if he looks hard enough maybe he can see what happened. It’s hits him like a slap in the face. (Probably a knuckle digging into his cheek? It’s mostly healed but even he knows that something like that isn’t just about the bruise. It’s a…symptom of something bigger, worse.)

Someone hit Eduardo. He doesn’t get why anyone would do that. Eduardo is nice. Mark is a dick sometimes but no one has hit him yet. Not in the face. Maybe it was an accident? Mark knows though that the bruise high on his cheekbone does not look like an accident. Mark wonders if he’s missed anything else. He wonders if Eduardo is hiding any other injuries under his suit of armor.

“What? Do I have something on my face?” Eduardo says self-consciously.

Mark doesn’t respond. He raises his hand to cup Eduardo’s chin and Eduardo _flinches_. Mark pushes forward and sticks his finger in his mouth before putting them on the smudge and trying to rub it out.

Eduardo jerks away from Mark’s touch, hissing. He barely manages not to shove Mark off the bed. His eyes are dark and wide. “What are you doing?” he says, obviously trying not to panic.

“Someone hit you.” The words sound too loud like an accusation.

“Mark,” Eduardo begins wearily. “Mark,” he says again like it’s an answer.

“What did you do?”

Eduardo knows that Mark only cares. He should tell Mark, it’s an inappropriate question, it’s private. He thinks that maybe Mark is asking ‘What did you do when the person hit you?’ but his mind automatically reads it as ‘What did you do to deserve it?’ It’s not any of his business. Yet, Mark is his Best Friend. No one told him not to talk about it exactly but he knew almost instinctively the first time it happened that this was a secret and he shouldn’t tell anyone. No one mentioned it again. It happened again and it was the same. No one had really cared either, not enough to look past the lies. It’s humiliating and not something he would bring up in everyday conversation anyway. It’s not like his father beats him. Eduardo is probably too much of a waste of his time and energy for him to do that. He just hits Eduardo sometimes when he’s angry. An open hand across his face or a backhand across his mouth. Eduardo has learned to stand outside of hitting range as much as possible when talking to his father. Although there’s nothing much he can do when his father says, ‘come here, Eduardo’ in that tone. It doesn’t make it right and he knows that but it just is. It is something that happens. Sometimes.

“I talked back,” Eduardo admits, ducking his head in embarrassment. “I should have known better.”

Mark furrowed his eyebrows. It was not what he meant but- “That’s it?”

Eduardo laughs at that. “It doesn’t take much to get him angry.” It gets easier to talk about it. “He was disappointed with this semester’s results, he said I could do better. I told him I tried. He told me to try harder and then I said that no matter what I do, it’ll never be good enough for him.”

“Wait, Wardo, your- your dad hits you?”

Eduardo ducks his head again, cringing inside at Mark’s phrasing. He doubts that Mark has ever been slapped by a parent. He hopes he never has to know what it feels like. The pain but more than that, the crushing shame. “Not like, hit. Just-” Eduardo raises his hand in a vague motion which Mark interprets to mean ‘slap me in the face hard enough to leave a bruise’.

Mark has no idea what to say. “That sounds-” Bad. Fucked up. What would Chris say? “…abusive."

Eduardo winces. “It’s not that bad, Mark.” He laughs nervously like, weird huh? He tries to shrug it off.

Mark just stares at him. He doesn’t think he’d laugh if his dad hit him. He doesn’t know what he would do because his dad doesn’t believe in doing things like that. Hitting people is wrong, even Mark knows that. But he wouldn’t have just stood there and let someone hit him. He can get why Eduardo might have let it happen when he was a kid maybe (and shit, did his dad do it to him when he was a kid?) but now? He blurts out, “Why didn’t you duck or hit him back? Uh, did you?” What if Eduardo did and then he hit him again or something? Is he not supposed to ask these things? He figures if Eduardo hasn’t left the room then obviously he wants to talk about it.

Eduardo actually cracks up and Mark feels kind of offended.

“Sorry, Mark but it’s funny. I can’t, I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it like that.” The image is ludicrous. Him hitting his father back. “To answer your questions, I ducked once. It didn’t turn out…well.” His father called him to him and then the result was predictable. Eduardo remembers his father turning a stinging slap into a backhand and the explosion of pain on the other side of his face. He could taste blood in his mouth and his ears were ringing and his mother was crying in the background. “As for hitting back, I don’t really like the feeling of getting hit so I wouldn’t want to do it to anyone else. Not even my father. Especially my father. It feels kind of wrong, you know? He’s my father. Plus, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.”

“He hits you on a regular basis?” Mark actually has to stop himself from saying ‘what the actual fuck, Wardo?’

“Less now actually,” Eduardo keeps answering, not knowing exactly why. This is shit he’s never told anyone. “I was a moody teenager,” Eduardo says lightly. He wonders if they should be having drinks for a talk like this.

“That is such a shitty argument,” Mark snorts, recognizing Eduardo’s excuses for what they were. “With that kind of reasoning, I should be covered in bruises still.”

Eduardo inhales sharply. “Don’t say things like that, Mark.” His heart aches when he thinks of someone hitting Mark. He likes the way Mark is: uninhibited by what everyone thinks of him, he says what he thinks without fear of reprisal. “I know it’s not… normal okay? It’s just sometimes,” he says with a sharp jut of a shoulder. “He has a quick temper,” Eduardo explains matter-of-factly.

“That’s not an excuse,” Mark says. For once he actually wants to hit someone and he’s not a violent person. This, it’s all wrong. No one should hit Eduardo and then make him feel like he is the one who has to apologize.

“I know,” Eduardo says heavily running a hand through his hand. “I don’t even know if he hit me because I was right or because I was wrong,” he confesses.

The answer is obvious to Mark. He wants to tell Eduardo that he shouldn’t even be thinking about it but he thinks he understands. Sort of. He tries. “You were right and he was wrong. He shouldn’t have hit you.”

Eduardo smiles tightly. It’s nice to have someone sticking up for him. But he can’t really say his father was wrong. It’s his father. He should respect him. Even if it’s his father who makes him wear the mark of his hand on his face. Who makes him carry the shame of it through college. “Thanks. For saying it,” he says gratefully, lump in his throat.

Mark nods. “You’re my best friend, Wardo,” Mark says, he knows Wardo will know what he means. He’s aware of Eduardo’s reluctance to continue the awkward conversation so Mark bumps his shoulder with his. “Halo? Loser buys pizza.”

“Sure,” Eduardo says, knowing that he’ll lose.

Eduardo’s smile is brilliant even if Mark can still see the bruise on his face.


End file.
